December 8, 2025 • 31 mins
In this episode, we explore the world of bad automotive designs, examining how historical context, consumer demand, and market trends influence the creation of vehicles that often miss the mark aesthetically. We discuss iconic failures like the Pontiac Aztec and AMC Gremlin, and how these designs, despite their flaws, found a niche in the market. The conversation delves into the 'ugly duckling' phenomenon, where vehicles that are initially deemed unattractive can still hold significant value and functionality. Ultimately, we reflect on the future of automotive design and the ongoing challenge of balancing aesthetics with consumer needs.
Everett J.
#autolooks
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Well, we've all seen it and we've all experienced hell.
It's probably gave birth.
let's not say probably.
It did give birth to the auto looks website, bad designs, as our original tagline said,protecting consumers from bad designs.
That's what auto looks stand for in the beginning.
And that's why we were there.
We're trying to protect you, the consumer from bad designs from ever getting out.
(00:23):
We literally wanted these companies to take accountability for the crap.
They were literally trying to shove down our throats.
But why?
Why did they get made?
Why do we have these bad cars?
There's a good answer to that.
And you really have to take a look at history to find out about it.
So today, AutoLooks is going to be taking a look at bad automotive designs.
(00:45):
Welcome back to the autolooks podcast.
I am your host as always the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr.
Everett Jay coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net, if you haven't been there stop bycheck it out read some of the reviews check out some of the ratings goes to corporate
links website page, big or small we have them all car companies from around the globe allavailable in one direct location.
The autolooks.net website, the auto looks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm EntertainmentGroup and distributed by Podbean.com If you'd like to get into that, send us an email over
(01:11):
email@autolooks.net.
So like I said in the beginning, bad designs.
We've all seen tons of bad designs.
Think about it throughout history.
How many bad designs can you think of right off the top of your head?
Hell, one car company comes to mind most famously for two horrible designs built up twocompletely different platforms.
(01:32):
We're going after the exact same market at the same time.
You think they would have done the same platform, but they were kind of stupid at thetime.
Essentially what killed this car company and we did do a podcast about them.
American motors.
Yes, the AMC Gremlin and Pacer, but ugly, boring cars.
And at the end of their life, the AMC Eagle cam back bad designs.
(01:55):
How did vehicles like this make it into production?
Hell, if you take a look at it, the Eagle cam back and the AMC Gremlin, essentially thecam back is just the rebirth of the Gremlin.
Same style, just with all wheel drive abilities.
So how do vehicles like this get made?
They're horrible.
Who really thinks they're a great idea?
Like the Pontiac Aztec.
(02:16):
If it wasn't for the show Breaking Bad, that's a car we would have forgotten about forhistory.
Think about it.
How many people listening right now can remember the 1999 Isuzu VehiCROSS and how that wassuch a weird and blandish design.
Some people may think it's kind of cool, kind of like the PT Cruiser, but then most of uswill look at it as a horrible design.
(02:38):
Way too much plastic body cladding.
short for what its main purpose is.
you were going to make a two-door off-road vehicle, why make it look more like a sportscar?
It was kind of an early iteration of Crosstrek or active sports car market.
We did a podcast about that.
you want to listen to it, active sports cars, pretty cool.
You learn a little bit about them, but we don't remember it because it didn't exist forvery long.
(03:00):
Hell, by the time it came out, it was just before Isuzu would pull the plug on automobilesales in North America.
They no longer sell their truck and their SUV here.
They still sell their big full-size cube trucks, but that's because we all know is whobuilds indestructible motors, just like Suzuki.
Fortunately Suzuki is only here and outboard motors and motorcycles and a few others, butthose are two biggest, but these bad designs they get through.
(03:26):
And how do we get through?
Well, in all sense, all vehicles go through planning stage where they find out what peopleneed.
Our episode we did about the Homer kind of explains this.
They gave Homer all the rights to make whatever vehicle he wanted because he was theaverage person.
Now, the average person on the market, I'm sorry to say to all my listeners right now,really doesn't know what they want.
(03:52):
We all think we know what we want.
Trust me, even even for myself, when I used to be an automotive designer back in the day,I would create designs of one context.
then go to another context.
wasn't a lot of similarities between a lot of my different designs.
So I really didn't know what I wanted when I built my own car company.
Never really got a paper, but when I built it and started building a lineup for it, a lotof my vehicles started looking similar to each other, but I found a more stable design for
(04:20):
it.
So for myself, just go through it with Powell Motors and the Simpsons.
We're just going to utilize that one for an explanation about how bad designs really getmade because
Think about it.
The Homer has everything anybody would really want for their vehicle.
But it also does not look like anything anybody in the real world would want to drive.
(04:40):
It has a separate space dome with an onboard video game system to keep the kidsentertained so they don't bother the parents while they're driving.
It has a little ball on the top of your antenna so you could find your vehicle anywhere.
Well, if everyone had those, it would just blend in, right?
Unless we all did different ones.
You know, I had a big powerful motor had everything that we thought we wanted.
(05:02):
But so did the Pontiac Aztec.
When you look at the design of the Pontiac Aztec, you ask yourself, how the hell did thatever get made?
If you actually go to the AutoLooks.net website, you go to the about or help pages, you'llfind more stuff about me on the about page, you go to my personal page that has all my old
designs on it.
Now I did a custom design job where I took the front end of a Pontiac
(05:26):
vibe and put it on the front end of a Pontiac Aztec made the thing look like way better.
Kind of like the rendezvous.
The rendezvous was still pretty bad, but not as bad as the Aztec, but the Aztec had whatconsumers wanted.
They wanted that rough and tumble, a wheel dry system and a vehicle that can go anywherethey really want to.
Soft roading and had a removable cooler, had an attachable tent to the back.
(05:50):
So you can literally just drive away from your tent in the morning.
It was made for the outdoor person.
Essentially what the Honda element was as well.
But you know, the Honda element was a horrible design to begin with as well as a giantcube.
But the concept behind it was amazing.
Like the Aztec.
When you start diving deep into the knowledge and everything that's in the package, whatconsumers were demanding at that time, we were starting to move out of the minivan market
(06:16):
and into the CUV market.
But a lot of people didn't want to get into the CUV market because they didn't want thesebig boxy off-road vehicles.
We wanted something more soft roader.
So Pontiac answered that by blending a minivan and a CUV together and more of a carfootprint.
They needed a new model and they wanted to gain entry to a brand new market and theywanted to do it quickly.
(06:38):
Unfortunately, when it came to the end, when you had to fit all of these pieces togetherand you got all the technology right, the project is nearing the time it needs to be
released.
And on a last minute ditch, you got to create a design for this thing.
You got to cover the package.
You can't just have a steel shell with amazing technology out driving around on thestreets.
You got to create a shell around it.
(07:01):
So Pontiac literally just threw what they thought would be a reasonable shell.
Hell, the people like the vibe and the people like the plastic body cladding on the thegrand am at that point in time.
And we got to give it this somewhat sport appeal, but we also need the massive plasticbody cladding because that's a big GM thing in the early 2000s.
Let's look at the Chevy Avalanche.
You'll understand what I'm talking about.
(07:22):
They wanted that.
But by adding the plastic body cladding, it gives it that more of soft rotor appeal.
Right.
Even though the design was horrible, it still looked like a Pontiac because it had thePontiac grill.
It had the Pontiac headlights and a hot Pontiac appeal to it.
So one of the board members to say no, it had everything customers were demanding invehicles except the design.
(07:45):
But when they looked at the design, they said, yeah, it looks pretty good.
We think people will buy it.
and they make it into production because they have a deadline to meet.
Same way that the FIAT Multipla made it out to the market.
It gave people the extra safety features, running lights that ride higher so you can seemore, especially in tall and old cities.
(08:06):
I remember the FIAT Multipla is from Italy.
You got to get down these narrow streets.
You got to be able to see everything around.
Well, the Multipla lifted the fog lights up.
Unfortunately, it just made the thing look but ugly.
The Toyota Privia was just like the old Chevy Lumina and Pontiac transport van.
wanted to maximize space and a minivan while getting lower fuel economy and giving you awider angle of vision.
(08:32):
If you notice today, one of the most hated things you'll find on vehicles today are flatwindshields.
Nobody curves a windshield anymore, but that's pretty much has to do with your leadersystem and your autonomous technology.
You can't have the curve because they haven't developed all of that yet.
to work with the system.
So we're just literally putting flat windshields back on vehicles.
But back in the 90s, we were able to curve them.
(08:54):
They created these giant bubble fronts.
Now, I had a friend, his mom had one of those Chevy Lumina vans, used to get rides toschool and right home after school.
And if you put something on the dash, kiss it goodbye, because it would literally roll allthe way to the front and disappear from you forever unless you got like four foot long
(09:14):
arms, you ain't getting the damn thing off the dash.
Sure.
It brought down your coefficient of drag, which means those vehicles got way better gasmileage than the caravans that were out at that point in time.
The caravan already owned the market.
So everybody else was just trying to find their niche in the market to get these thingsaround.
They gave people what they wanted, not something good to look at.
(09:34):
And like I said, in the beginning of this, you got to look back through history.
FIAT entered the automotive marketplace.
And if you go back to the FIAT 600 held even the FIAT 500.
were tiny gelatinous blob vehicles.
But the 600 multipla maximized space in a small package.
It utilized every square inch without making an actual drivable brick.
(09:56):
It maximized the space.
It gave people what they needed.
Tons of space in a small package at a low price.
It just did it in a bad looking way.
And then you get into Ford.
Ford's greatest foible in history.
The Edsel.
A vehicle that was brought up
be so amazing and so revolutionary was going to change the world.
(10:19):
Had everything the market wanted except looks really, you know, all sense, everythingexcept look that again is because they rushed it to meet the deadline last minute designs.
couldn't clean up the issues that they saw.
They just literally had to go with it and get it out to the market.
But then there lies another question.
(10:39):
When they get these horrible designs out to the market, why do they stick around for solong?
Like the gremlins, the Chevy Citations, the Aztecs, the PT Cruisers, how the secondgeneration Honda pilots and even the FIAT Multiplus.
Oh, today, one of the easiest ones is the Cybertrucks.
Why do these vehicles stick around for so long?
(10:59):
There's still people that buy them and they buy them based off of what the originalvehicle was intended for.
You have to remember, everybody always looks
at a baby and not everybody will say it's a beautiful baby.
say you got looks only a mother can love or father.
Let's just say it in a whole generalized context.
You got looks only a parent can love.
(11:22):
Okay.
That's what these vehicles have.
It's essentially like calling somebody ugly on the outside, but gorgeous on the inside.
That's what these vehicles are.
They're an ugly duckling on the exterior.
but they're one of the most beautiful things on the inside.
And when people find out about them on the inside, they realize how great these productswere.
(11:43):
The Gremlin fit a lot of stuff into a small package and didn't utilize tons of gas.
Hell, they had V8 models too.
Kind of weird, but they did exist.
Hell, they had the special Levi's edition, which one of my dad's good friends had.
The Pacer, a giant, as they call it, the fishbowl on wheels.
Well, fishbowls are really big.
Which means if you watch the movie Wayne's World, you understand how five people, fiveadults fit comfortably into that small, tiny little hatchback.
(12:11):
Remember that was a compact vehicle back then, even though it's about the same size as amidsize compact is today.
It did its part and it fit the market.
went for Honda had a foible like this.
Actually they had about three of them just in the past 20 years, actually.
Yeah.
Past 20 years, the Acura ZDX.
the Honda element, the Ridgeline and the second generation Pilot.
(12:34):
We're also going to throw in the 2012 Honda Odyssey as well.
They had this whole period right around 2010 to 2012.
They had these horrible, horrible designs.
They put a barbecue heating element as the grill for a Honda Ridgeline on a vehicle thatwas just downright boring.
Hell, even the first generation pilots ran off the same platform as originally.
(12:56):
They were bland.
They were boring.
Honda wanted to get a pickup truck out to the marketplace.
But when people started realizing the back seats folded up perfectly, there's this toolstorage underneath the back bench.
The tailgate doesn't just drop down.
It has a hinge on it, like a back door, like a CUV.
You can put stuff underneath the bed, or if you want to go tailgating, you throw ice inthere and throw some pop or beer, whatever you fancy.
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It had all of these amazing things for its market.
And like we said, it's like the ugly duckling that's beautiful inside.
The technology and everything that went into making this vehicle was planned perfectlyuntil the design.
The ZDX was like that same with the Honda Accord Crosstour early to the market of activelifestyle vehicles.
They saw a change coming as people were starting to back away from the crossover utilitymarketplace and starting to move into more sport inspired vehicles.
(13:47):
The coup profile CUVs like the Mercedes GLC class.
It was a coup profile.
The CLS kind of brought that out with sedans, but the GLC was bringing it out in CUVs.
The ZDX and the Honda and the Accord Crosstour showed this market in its infancy.
The ZDX, not a lot of people liked and people hated the low headroom in the back seats.
(14:09):
That was something technology wise they needed to get a grasp on.
The Accord Crosstour gave you everything that you loved about your Honda Accord.
Just lifted.
It was cool.
It was good and it made entry and exit easier.
The element was built for your urban dwellers who loves to explore the world.
You can sleep inside of it and you can put your bikes in it right after going mountainbiking covered mud because the back of it, you can hose it down.
(14:36):
The Odyssey's later on, kind of like Chrysler, had vacuums built into them because theyknow that parents deal with kids throwing food all over the place and you need to vacuum
this shit up.
So they added a vacuum to it.
A great add on.
to a great vehicle, but something like the Caravan still bland and boring.
was a giant blob in the nineties and early 2000s.
(14:57):
It was a square cube in the eighties, early nineties, and now into the teen and 20 years,but it held the market.
The Odyssey tried to change that market with bland and boring.
And hell, I did one of my first auto looks online videos about the Honda Odyssey and God,the amount of people bad mouthing me because I called it the ugly duckling really didn't
(15:18):
understand how I was saying,
that has got great Honda build quality, great features and technology behind it, but ahorrid design.
It's bland.
It's boring.
But in yet at that point in time, Honda didn't care about design language.
People bought their vehicles for quality build only.
Toyota was like that back then, too.
She got all of these bad designs.
(15:41):
They're built for their market.
They were priced for their market, and they had everything that people required in thatmarket.
Just everybody else who didn't like that form of marketplace didn't understand theirdesigns.
To this day, I understand the Pontiac Aztec.
And after going to the Toronto Auto Show around the year it came out, going through it andseeing how it has a takeout cooler, how you can put a tent on it, easily washable, every
(16:06):
single thing inside of it just screamed urban adventurer.
It was the ultimate urban adventure vehicle.
Had everything we wanted.
Everything the market demanded.
except a design acceptable by the marketplace.
And we've seen this over time.
Nissan tried to find a weird niche back in 2012 with the Murano Cross Cabriolet, aconvertible two door version of a Nissan Murano.
(16:31):
They thought the CUV was ready for a convertible.
Well, it would be not too long after that when the Evoque convertible and even theVolkswagen T-Roc Cabriolet came out.
These were vehicles that saw that there was
a marketplace for two door crossover utility vehicles with a convertible top.
The Murano did not have a design to pull this thing off.
(16:53):
It was weird, really weird.
How can they ever think of marketplace would love that?
But you know what?
People still bought it.
People buy weird and bad designs because of price points because they want to bedifferent.
Hell, I owned a Kia Borrego before with less than 1500 of them sold in Canada.
And less than 15,000 of them ever sold in the United States.
(17:15):
was on one of the rarest Kia's out there.
Essentially, it was one of the only Kia unicorns you could find either.
Build quality was above par when it came to Kia products, but it was different.
And that's what I liked about it.
The Element was different.
The Nissan Quest was different.
The Myers Motors Duo was different.
The FIAT 500L was different.
All of these vehicles made a statement.
(17:35):
Like we said, the Cybertruck how does this Cybertruck come out when it literally lookslike a doorstop?
If anybody wants to try that, my son and I have actually been starting it, even thoughthere's only like two cyber trucks in our city, buying cheap doorstops at dollar stores.
And anytime you see a Cybertruck, you put the doorstop on it.
You know, just like the duck thing with Jeeps, we started doing this and we just thoughtit was kind of funny because they look like a doorstop.
(17:58):
Let's give people a doorstop.
They have a doorstop collection in the Cybertruck and you can put the doorstop collection.
on your dash because it'll fit perfectly under the windshield.
But something like that has a place in society.
There are people that bad mouth vehicles like the PT Cruiser and the Aztec, but love theCybertruck.
Even though the Cybertruck is one of the simplest automotive designs in history.
(18:20):
It even has the most basic rim design of all time.
Everything about it just screams a two year old druid.
I made pickup trucks that look like that when I was a kid.
Actually the design.
For the Cybertruck looks more like when I used to design Lamborghini Countach's when I wasyounger, oddly enough.
Being this little blocky designs you do when you're little.
(18:40):
That's what the Cybertruck look like to me.
But there are people out there who think it's cool.
It's revolutionary.
It's going to change the world.
Unfortunately, these vehicles eventually die off because there's not enough of thosepeople out there to see the true beauty of these vehicles.
Chevrolet learned that with the Malibu Maxx.
The Malibu is the new ones from Opel second generation.
(19:02):
It's from, not second generation, but the 2005 was from Opel.
Um, you know, it's kind of weird and odd.
Let's make a hatchback out of it.
And to try and keep things going, Chevrolet does what Chevrolet does best.
They add a sport appeal package to it.
The SS model of the Malibu Maxx.
Ooh, now it's a performance product.
It's still weird, but ugly.
(19:23):
But a lot of other people have done that with their vehicles.
add aftermarket modifications, board appeal packages to try and make them look better.
eventually got rid of that stupid heating grill from a barbecue as its grill for the HondaRidgeline.
And what was just a standard three bar grill.
Then they got into the beehive.
Once they did the beehive, it looked amazing.
One of the things is when the original Ridgeline came out, I did customized drawings backthen.
(19:46):
And I did one of the Ridgeline and by just putting on a beehive grill and dropping thething down, I made it look amazing.
There were ways to make it look better.
And has a weird blocky designs that always look great, which has a little bit ofmodifications to them.
You can think that the worst car and about less than $5,000 later, you can have theworld's best looking car.
(20:07):
I don't know them in Volkswagen.
I do this.
It's part of the design language.
They just know how to make something bland and boring look good in the aftermarket world.
But as the market retracts on these
They eventually disappear.
The PT Cruiser had a big enough retro market that they managed to go out through twodesign phases.
you've noticed, a lot of the vehicles I've talked about in this only lived through onedesign phase.
(20:32):
The Honda Element, the PT.
Cruiser, one of the only two that made it across multiple ones.
Hell, the FIAT Uno, one of those boring designs from Italy ever has managed to make it along time.
We're talking decades.
Mercedes A Class has kicked around.
Now the A-Class design is completely changed, just like the GLC coupe models.
(20:53):
So some of these live past one generation, but if they're not big enough and don't takeenough of the market share out there to gain traction for the vehicle, they can't live
past that first generation.
And if they become a flop in sales board members don't want to push through a secondgeneration.
The Aztec could have been so much more had they put a Pontiac vibe front end on it, gotrid of the plastic body cladding.
(21:15):
If you look at
Aztecs with that old plastic body cladding.
They they actually look a little bit better.
They look more Pontiac inspired.
Add a Vibe front end to it and fix up the back.
You got to remember the back of the Aztec was very similar to the second design of theToyota Prius with that broken window on the back.
How the Mitsubishi Eclipse or ASX has the same thing as well.
(21:37):
So there's parts of the design they could have kept, but other ones they need to change.
A little less character on the side.
A Vibe front end.
Bigger tires and wheels because I knew somebody that actually drove one of these thingsand he said, it feels like it's going to tip over every single time you turn a corner.
It doesn't, but it feels that way.
Different tires.
There's so much that could have been done to make these vehicles last longer.
(21:58):
Kind of like the Toyota Privia.
It became the Sienna when they got rid of that giant aerodynamic weird ass design fromearly nineties.
The Honda Pilot finally got away from it's block toaster style.
That's a podcast we did about.
Toaster cars, there's a lot of them out there, big blocky vehicles and quite a few of themin the bad designs.
The element, the cube, the pilot, hell, even the Scion XB are all part of toaster cars,two box designs at their maximum.
(22:25):
Some of them are just bad designs in the design era.
The Nissan Quest, the last design we had in North America.
was the worst one.
think the design literally killed the vehicle.
But if you look at the vehicles, like Nissan's at that point in time, that's when theywere getting into bed with Renault and they started utilizing Renault designs.
And if you've seen Renault designs in the late nineties and early 2000s, you reallyunderstand they have a lot.
(22:48):
And I do mean a lot of bad designs, but unfortunately they had a market that really didn'tcare.
They just wanted to buy French cars on a French market.
So they sold.
Some of these are horrible designs and they sell for quite a while.
Like I said, the PT Cruiser over a decade.
The Aztec only lived a few years, but the PGA lived on.
Some of them come back.
The FIAT Multipla, as we all thought, was horrible design.
(23:11):
Zotye from China decided to bring back their own Multipla in 2012, 10 years later, andthey really didn't do much to make it better.
The actual headlights and hood formation were a little bit different.
a little more modern, a little more streamlined compared to the original multiple, butstill wasn't that great.
Now, do you want to talk about weird designs that have attempted to come out to the marketand tempted to keep themselves from being destroyed in the market?
(23:39):
I don't know if I'm going to get sued or, you know, be served papers after this podcastcomes out.
back in 2013, a plastic surgeon from California decided to create his own car called theYouabian Puma.
It's an early iteration of an active sports car.
It kind of looks like an Eagle Talon that was stretched out, given some off-road tires,and then somebody just beat it in the face of the shovel.
(24:02):
It's but ugly and weird.
It doesn't have a purpose.
It was kind of cool in its concept, but design?
Somebody really shit the bed there.
Of course, the guy's a plastic surgeon.
I really would like to see some of his work to find out how he actually managed to make anEagle Talon look like this thing, because
I wouldn't trust him.
If I found out it was him that made the car and he's about to do my nose job.
(24:25):
Sorry, I'm getting a new doctor.
But this thing, it came out.
Now it was a specialty product.
He only sold a very few amount of them and never became a big car company.
So something like that explains itself with a bad design.
It's a creator's design.
That's what they love.
That's what they wanted to create.
They wanted to see if there's a market, even if there wasn't a market, they got thevehicle that they loved and always wanted.
(24:48):
You'll be in Puma.
He got what he wanted.
That plastic surgeon got the car he always wanted.
It was his dream.
That's his dream.
May not be everybody else's dream.
We may bad mouth it.
A lot of other people may bad mouth it, but he loved it.
It's a face only a mother can love.
And he did.
Unlike the FIAT 500L living.
Oh God, you take the 500 and stretch it back and up out.
(25:10):
It's literally like you just stretched it.
And that's a design you could do that with.
It looks worse.
Hell, the 500 to begin with is not a car I really care about, but
As a two door little hatchback, it's a lot cooler than this crossover vehicle they createdwith the 500L living.
Besides that, gaining entry into markets is one of the biggest things people try and breakout in their own niches.
(25:32):
And that's where a lot of these vehicles come from.
They try and meet the market demand.
They try and meet a brand like break a new niche, or they're even just trying to breakinto the market.
Something like Cenntro City Porter, Cenntro Electric builds the most bland
basic looking commercial vans out there.
But if they price them at such a low rate, people will just buy them.
(25:52):
They won't care the designs was boring, bland things you've ever seen in your entire life.
Even worse than the Cybertruck or even a Mercedes Benz EQS, literally just a giant blob.
They're bland, they're boring and they got no substance.
But these vehicles came out for a purpose and they met that purpose and they met thatmarket and people very select few.
(26:15):
liked them.
Hell, some of them even fit into a marketplace that was just emerging and hung around justbecause they were one of the first ones like the Gremlin and Pacer.
The Citation had a place in history.
The Corvair had a place in history.
The 600 Multipla had a place in history.
The VehiCROSS, the buddy electric, little two-seater electric car had a place in history.
(26:36):
All of these vehicles gave us something that somebody wanted and somebody thought theworld needed.
At that point in time,
It was the greatest project on paper.
Even if the design didn't work, everything else about it would work for the marketplace.
We're going to make some money off of it.
It's not going to become a major dud and we're not going to lose our shirts on it.
(26:57):
Some of these companies did go belly up because they were too small to try and keepthemselves into the marketplace that they were building.
Mitsuoka keeps going out and creating weird vehicles like the Galue the Viewt and theHimiko
weird looking vehicles built up pre existing platforms, but there's still a market thatwants them that likes them that wants to see them.
(27:18):
You never going to stop all bad designs because we change all these bad designs as we'venoticed with the auto looks rating system.
The end of the year, we've changed so many different designs out into the world that todayare rating systems.
All we're seeing is a C average for everyone.
50 % Yeah, 50 % is the C average for us.
Okay.
C average it's going to be coming a bland
(27:39):
boring marketplace.
We need some of these bad designs gives us something to talk about gives you something totalk about and gives the person who purchases it something to be proud about.
Like I said, the Youabian Puma made the creator proud that he got to own and create thatown vehicle.
I can't say that, but he can even though I badmouthed for its design.
(28:00):
He managed to build that.
I did it.
That's what we really have to start looking at.
These may have been bad designs, but they fit a place in the market.
They had some purpose to being there.
We don't just throw bad designs out there and hope they're going to make it.
Well, we did at one point in time in North America.
We did it back in the early 20s in China.
Well, it's happening right now.
A lot of other places in world.
(28:21):
don't bad designs will keep happening throughout history.
Maybe not so much now as people realize.
Then we need to work on design just as much as technology.
But as technology is becoming more condensed inside of our vehicles, we don't need as muchspace.
So we can make the most beautiful design and put all the amazing technology within it.
We've gotten to a point where we can design the shell of a car and design what's inside ofit.
(28:45):
Instead of designing what's inside of it, then designing the shell.
So bad designs, they're here.
They're going to stick around and we're going to keep talking about them.
So will you ever kill them?
No.
because somebody somewhere is going to say this is a good idea.
So if you like this podcast, we'd like share a comment about any major social feed orstreaming sites.
You found the auto looks podcast on like a share us comment about us.
(29:07):
Send us your friends, your family, your well wishers, girlfriend, boyfriend, you know,anything like that.
Send it out.
Ask them about all these bad designs.
Do you think they like the bad design vehicle?
What do they love about it?
And tell us.
what they love about some of these bad design.
Send us a picture of their crappy vehicle that you think is the most horrible design ahist.
Tell us what they love about it and what they really care about that bad design.
(29:31):
Like I said, send it on your social feeds.
Now, wherever you found the AutoLooks podcast on any the social feeds, streaming sites, oreven the website, us your comments, your input, emails, know where to send it.
If you got questions or you want something answered, send an email over toemail@autolooks.net.
The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed byPodbean.com If you'd like to get in with us, send us an email over email@autolooks.net.
(29:55):
So after that, stop by the website, some reviews, check out some of the reviews, go tocorporate links website page, big or small, we got them all available on the AutoLooks.net
website.
And if we don't have them, let us know what your most hated car of history.
Hell, go and check out a corporate links website page.
We got pictures from all these small little car companies, some of them that are horribly,horribly bad that you would never think, why would somebody make that?
(30:15):
It's all available right there for you at the AutoLooks.net website.
So for myself Everett Jay, Podbean.com Ecomm Entertainment Group and the AutoLookswebsite, strap yourself in for this one final ride.
Does he bad designs are going to take us on.
you
you
you
Well, we've all seen it and we've all experienced hell.
It's probably gave birth.
let's not say probably.
It did give birth to the auto looks website, bad designs, as our original tagline said,protecting consumers from bad designs.
That's what auto looks stand for in the beginning.
And that's why we were there.
We're trying to protect you, the consumer from bad designs from ever getting out.
(00:23):
We literally wanted these companies to take accountability for the crap.
They were literally trying to shove down our throats.
But why?
Why did they get made?
Why do we have these bad cars?
There's a good answer to that.
And you really have to take a look at history to find out about it.
So today, AutoLooks is going to be taking a look at bad automotive designs.
(00:45):
Welcome back to the autolooks podcast.
I am your host as always the doctor to the automotive industry, Mr.
Everett Jay coming to you from our host website at AutoLooks.net, if you haven't been there stop bycheck it out read some of the reviews check out some of the ratings goes to corporate
links website page, big or small we have them all car companies from around the globe allavailable in one direct location.
The autolooks.net website, the auto looks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm EntertainmentGroup and distributed by Podbean.com If you'd like to get into that, send us an email over
(01:11):
email@autolooks.net.
So like I said in the beginning, bad designs.
We've all seen tons of bad designs.
Think about it throughout history.
How many bad designs can you think of right off the top of your head?
Hell, one car company comes to mind most famously for two horrible designs built up twocompletely different platforms.
(01:32):
We're going after the exact same market at the same time.
You think they would have done the same platform, but they were kind of stupid at thetime.
Essentially what killed this car company and we did do a podcast about them.
American motors.
Yes, the AMC Gremlin and Pacer, but ugly, boring cars.
And at the end of their life, the AMC Eagle cam back bad designs.
(01:55):
How did vehicles like this make it into production?
Hell, if you take a look at it, the Eagle cam back and the AMC Gremlin, essentially thecam back is just the rebirth of the Gremlin.
Same style, just with all wheel drive abilities.
So how do vehicles like this get made?
They're horrible.
Who really thinks they're a great idea?
Like the Pontiac Aztec.
(02:16):
If it wasn't for the show Breaking Bad, that's a car we would have forgotten about forhistory.
Think about it.
How many people listening right now can remember the 1999 Isuzu VehiCROSS and how that wassuch a weird and blandish design.
Some people may think it's kind of cool, kind of like the PT Cruiser, but then most of uswill look at it as a horrible design.
(02:38):
Way too much plastic body cladding.
short for what its main purpose is.
you were going to make a two-door off-road vehicle, why make it look more like a sportscar?
It was kind of an early iteration of Crosstrek or active sports car market.
We did a podcast about that.
you want to listen to it, active sports cars, pretty cool.
You learn a little bit about them, but we don't remember it because it didn't exist forvery long.
(03:00):
Hell, by the time it came out, it was just before Isuzu would pull the plug on automobilesales in North America.
They no longer sell their truck and their SUV here.
They still sell their big full-size cube trucks, but that's because we all know is whobuilds indestructible motors, just like Suzuki.
Fortunately Suzuki is only here and outboard motors and motorcycles and a few others, butthose are two biggest, but these bad designs they get through.
(03:26):
And how do we get through?
Well, in all sense, all vehicles go through planning stage where they find out what peopleneed.
Our episode we did about the Homer kind of explains this.
They gave Homer all the rights to make whatever vehicle he wanted because he was theaverage person.
Now, the average person on the market, I'm sorry to say to all my listeners right now,really doesn't know what they want.
(03:52):
We all think we know what we want.
Trust me, even even for myself, when I used to be an automotive designer back in the day,I would create designs of one context.
then go to another context.
wasn't a lot of similarities between a lot of my different designs.
So I really didn't know what I wanted when I built my own car company.
Never really got a paper, but when I built it and started building a lineup for it, a lotof my vehicles started looking similar to each other, but I found a more stable design for
(04:20):
it.
So for myself, just go through it with Powell Motors and the Simpsons.
We're just going to utilize that one for an explanation about how bad designs really getmade because
Think about it.
The Homer has everything anybody would really want for their vehicle.
But it also does not look like anything anybody in the real world would want to drive.
(04:40):
It has a separate space dome with an onboard video game system to keep the kidsentertained so they don't bother the parents while they're driving.
It has a little ball on the top of your antenna so you could find your vehicle anywhere.
Well, if everyone had those, it would just blend in, right?
Unless we all did different ones.
You know, I had a big powerful motor had everything that we thought we wanted.
(05:02):
But so did the Pontiac Aztec.
When you look at the design of the Pontiac Aztec, you ask yourself, how the hell did thatever get made?
If you actually go to the AutoLooks.net website, you go to the about or help pages, you'llfind more stuff about me on the about page, you go to my personal page that has all my old
designs on it.
Now I did a custom design job where I took the front end of a Pontiac
(05:26):
vibe and put it on the front end of a Pontiac Aztec made the thing look like way better.
Kind of like the rendezvous.
The rendezvous was still pretty bad, but not as bad as the Aztec, but the Aztec had whatconsumers wanted.
They wanted that rough and tumble, a wheel dry system and a vehicle that can go anywherethey really want to.
Soft roading and had a removable cooler, had an attachable tent to the back.
(05:50):
So you can literally just drive away from your tent in the morning.
It was made for the outdoor person.
Essentially what the Honda element was as well.
But you know, the Honda element was a horrible design to begin with as well as a giantcube.
But the concept behind it was amazing.
Like the Aztec.
When you start diving deep into the knowledge and everything that's in the package, whatconsumers were demanding at that time, we were starting to move out of the minivan market
(06:16):
and into the CUV market.
But a lot of people didn't want to get into the CUV market because they didn't want thesebig boxy off-road vehicles.
We wanted something more soft roader.
So Pontiac answered that by blending a minivan and a CUV together and more of a carfootprint.
They needed a new model and they wanted to gain entry to a brand new market and theywanted to do it quickly.
(06:38):
Unfortunately, when it came to the end, when you had to fit all of these pieces togetherand you got all the technology right, the project is nearing the time it needs to be
released.
And on a last minute ditch, you got to create a design for this thing.
You got to cover the package.
You can't just have a steel shell with amazing technology out driving around on thestreets.
You got to create a shell around it.
(07:01):
So Pontiac literally just threw what they thought would be a reasonable shell.
Hell, the people like the vibe and the people like the plastic body cladding on the thegrand am at that point in time.
And we got to give it this somewhat sport appeal, but we also need the massive plasticbody cladding because that's a big GM thing in the early 2000s.
Let's look at the Chevy Avalanche.
You'll understand what I'm talking about.
(07:22):
They wanted that.
But by adding the plastic body cladding, it gives it that more of soft rotor appeal.
Right.
Even though the design was horrible, it still looked like a Pontiac because it had thePontiac grill.
It had the Pontiac headlights and a hot Pontiac appeal to it.
So one of the board members to say no, it had everything customers were demanding invehicles except the design.
(07:45):
But when they looked at the design, they said, yeah, it looks pretty good.
We think people will buy it.
and they make it into production because they have a deadline to meet.
Same way that the FIAT Multipla made it out to the market.
It gave people the extra safety features, running lights that ride higher so you can seemore, especially in tall and old cities.
(08:06):
I remember the FIAT Multipla is from Italy.
You got to get down these narrow streets.
You got to be able to see everything around.
Well, the Multipla lifted the fog lights up.
Unfortunately, it just made the thing look but ugly.
The Toyota Privia was just like the old Chevy Lumina and Pontiac transport van.
wanted to maximize space and a minivan while getting lower fuel economy and giving you awider angle of vision.
(08:32):
If you notice today, one of the most hated things you'll find on vehicles today are flatwindshields.
Nobody curves a windshield anymore, but that's pretty much has to do with your leadersystem and your autonomous technology.
You can't have the curve because they haven't developed all of that yet.
to work with the system.
So we're just literally putting flat windshields back on vehicles.
But back in the 90s, we were able to curve them.
(08:54):
They created these giant bubble fronts.
Now, I had a friend, his mom had one of those Chevy Lumina vans, used to get rides toschool and right home after school.
And if you put something on the dash, kiss it goodbye, because it would literally roll allthe way to the front and disappear from you forever unless you got like four foot long
(09:14):
arms, you ain't getting the damn thing off the dash.
Sure.
It brought down your coefficient of drag, which means those vehicles got way better gasmileage than the caravans that were out at that point in time.
The caravan already owned the market.
So everybody else was just trying to find their niche in the market to get these thingsaround.
They gave people what they wanted, not something good to look at.
(09:34):
And like I said, in the beginning of this, you got to look back through history.
FIAT entered the automotive marketplace.
And if you go back to the FIAT 600 held even the FIAT 500.
were tiny gelatinous blob vehicles.
But the 600 multipla maximized space in a small package.
It utilized every square inch without making an actual drivable brick.
(09:56):
It maximized the space.
It gave people what they needed.
Tons of space in a small package at a low price.
It just did it in a bad looking way.
And then you get into Ford.
Ford's greatest foible in history.
The Edsel.
A vehicle that was brought up
be so amazing and so revolutionary was going to change the world.
(10:19):
Had everything the market wanted except looks really, you know, all sense, everythingexcept look that again is because they rushed it to meet the deadline last minute designs.
couldn't clean up the issues that they saw.
They just literally had to go with it and get it out to the market.
But then there lies another question.
(10:39):
When they get these horrible designs out to the market, why do they stick around for solong?
Like the gremlins, the Chevy Citations, the Aztecs, the PT Cruisers, how the secondgeneration Honda pilots and even the FIAT Multiplus.
Oh, today, one of the easiest ones is the Cybertrucks.
Why do these vehicles stick around for so long?
(10:59):
There's still people that buy them and they buy them based off of what the originalvehicle was intended for.
You have to remember, everybody always looks
at a baby and not everybody will say it's a beautiful baby.
say you got looks only a mother can love or father.
Let's just say it in a whole generalized context.
You got looks only a parent can love.
(11:22):
Okay.
That's what these vehicles have.
It's essentially like calling somebody ugly on the outside, but gorgeous on the inside.
That's what these vehicles are.
They're an ugly duckling on the exterior.
but they're one of the most beautiful things on the inside.
And when people find out about them on the inside, they realize how great these productswere.
(11:43):
The Gremlin fit a lot of stuff into a small package and didn't utilize tons of gas.
Hell, they had V8 models too.
Kind of weird, but they did exist.
Hell, they had the special Levi's edition, which one of my dad's good friends had.
The Pacer, a giant, as they call it, the fishbowl on wheels.
Well, fishbowls are really big.
Which means if you watch the movie Wayne's World, you understand how five people, fiveadults fit comfortably into that small, tiny little hatchback.
(12:11):
Remember that was a compact vehicle back then, even though it's about the same size as amidsize compact is today.
It did its part and it fit the market.
went for Honda had a foible like this.
Actually they had about three of them just in the past 20 years, actually.
Yeah.
Past 20 years, the Acura ZDX.
the Honda element, the Ridgeline and the second generation Pilot.
(12:34):
We're also going to throw in the 2012 Honda Odyssey as well.
They had this whole period right around 2010 to 2012.
They had these horrible, horrible designs.
They put a barbecue heating element as the grill for a Honda Ridgeline on a vehicle thatwas just downright boring.
Hell, even the first generation pilots ran off the same platform as originally.
(12:56):
They were bland.
They were boring.
Honda wanted to get a pickup truck out to the marketplace.
But when people started realizing the back seats folded up perfectly, there's this toolstorage underneath the back bench.
The tailgate doesn't just drop down.
It has a hinge on it, like a back door, like a CUV.
You can put stuff underneath the bed, or if you want to go tailgating, you throw ice inthere and throw some pop or beer, whatever you fancy.
(13:19):
It had all of these amazing things for its market.
And like we said, it's like the ugly duckling that's beautiful inside.
The technology and everything that went into making this vehicle was planned perfectlyuntil the design.
The ZDX was like that same with the Honda Accord Crosstour early to the market of activelifestyle vehicles.
They saw a change coming as people were starting to back away from the crossover utilitymarketplace and starting to move into more sport inspired vehicles.
(13:47):
The coup profile CUVs like the Mercedes GLC class.
It was a coup profile.
The CLS kind of brought that out with sedans, but the GLC was bringing it out in CUVs.
The ZDX and the Honda and the Accord Crosstour showed this market in its infancy.
The ZDX, not a lot of people liked and people hated the low headroom in the back seats.
(14:09):
That was something technology wise they needed to get a grasp on.
The Accord Crosstour gave you everything that you loved about your Honda Accord.
Just lifted.
It was cool.
It was good and it made entry and exit easier.
The element was built for your urban dwellers who loves to explore the world.
You can sleep inside of it and you can put your bikes in it right after going mountainbiking covered mud because the back of it, you can hose it down.
(14:36):
The Odyssey's later on, kind of like Chrysler, had vacuums built into them because theyknow that parents deal with kids throwing food all over the place and you need to vacuum
this shit up.
So they added a vacuum to it.
A great add on.
to a great vehicle, but something like the Caravan still bland and boring.
was a giant blob in the nineties and early 2000s.
(14:57):
It was a square cube in the eighties, early nineties, and now into the teen and 20 years,but it held the market.
The Odyssey tried to change that market with bland and boring.
And hell, I did one of my first auto looks online videos about the Honda Odyssey and God,the amount of people bad mouthing me because I called it the ugly duckling really didn't
(15:18):
understand how I was saying,
that has got great Honda build quality, great features and technology behind it, but ahorrid design.
It's bland.
It's boring.
But in yet at that point in time, Honda didn't care about design language.
People bought their vehicles for quality build only.
Toyota was like that back then, too.
She got all of these bad designs.
(15:41):
They're built for their market.
They were priced for their market, and they had everything that people required in thatmarket.
Just everybody else who didn't like that form of marketplace didn't understand theirdesigns.
To this day, I understand the Pontiac Aztec.
And after going to the Toronto Auto Show around the year it came out, going through it andseeing how it has a takeout cooler, how you can put a tent on it, easily washable, every
(16:06):
single thing inside of it just screamed urban adventurer.
It was the ultimate urban adventure vehicle.
Had everything we wanted.
Everything the market demanded.
except a design acceptable by the marketplace.
And we've seen this over time.
Nissan tried to find a weird niche back in 2012 with the Murano Cross Cabriolet, aconvertible two door version of a Nissan Murano.
(16:31):
They thought the CUV was ready for a convertible.
Well, it would be not too long after that when the Evoque convertible and even theVolkswagen T-Roc Cabriolet came out.
These were vehicles that saw that there was
a marketplace for two door crossover utility vehicles with a convertible top.
The Murano did not have a design to pull this thing off.
(16:53):
It was weird, really weird.
How can they ever think of marketplace would love that?
But you know what?
People still bought it.
People buy weird and bad designs because of price points because they want to bedifferent.
Hell, I owned a Kia Borrego before with less than 1500 of them sold in Canada.
And less than 15,000 of them ever sold in the United States.
(17:15):
was on one of the rarest Kia's out there.
Essentially, it was one of the only Kia unicorns you could find either.
Build quality was above par when it came to Kia products, but it was different.
And that's what I liked about it.
The Element was different.
The Nissan Quest was different.
The Myers Motors Duo was different.
The FIAT 500L was different.
All of these vehicles made a statement.
(17:35):
Like we said, the Cybertruck how does this Cybertruck come out when it literally lookslike a doorstop?
If anybody wants to try that, my son and I have actually been starting it, even thoughthere's only like two cyber trucks in our city, buying cheap doorstops at dollar stores.
And anytime you see a Cybertruck, you put the doorstop on it.
You know, just like the duck thing with Jeeps, we started doing this and we just thoughtit was kind of funny because they look like a doorstop.
(17:58):
Let's give people a doorstop.
They have a doorstop collection in the Cybertruck and you can put the doorstop collection.
on your dash because it'll fit perfectly under the windshield.
But something like that has a place in society.
There are people that bad mouth vehicles like the PT Cruiser and the Aztec, but love theCybertruck.
Even though the Cybertruck is one of the simplest automotive designs in history.
(18:20):
It even has the most basic rim design of all time.
Everything about it just screams a two year old druid.
I made pickup trucks that look like that when I was a kid.
Actually the design.
For the Cybertruck looks more like when I used to design Lamborghini Countach's when I wasyounger, oddly enough.
Being this little blocky designs you do when you're little.
(18:40):
That's what the Cybertruck look like to me.
But there are people out there who think it's cool.
It's revolutionary.
It's going to change the world.
Unfortunately, these vehicles eventually die off because there's not enough of thosepeople out there to see the true beauty of these vehicles.
Chevrolet learned that with the Malibu Maxx.
The Malibu is the new ones from Opel second generation.
(19:02):
It's from, not second generation, but the 2005 was from Opel.
Um, you know, it's kind of weird and odd.
Let's make a hatchback out of it.
And to try and keep things going, Chevrolet does what Chevrolet does best.
They add a sport appeal package to it.
The SS model of the Malibu Maxx.
Ooh, now it's a performance product.
It's still weird, but ugly.
(19:23):
But a lot of other people have done that with their vehicles.
add aftermarket modifications, board appeal packages to try and make them look better.
eventually got rid of that stupid heating grill from a barbecue as its grill for the HondaRidgeline.
And what was just a standard three bar grill.
Then they got into the beehive.
Once they did the beehive, it looked amazing.
One of the things is when the original Ridgeline came out, I did customized drawings backthen.
(19:46):
And I did one of the Ridgeline and by just putting on a beehive grill and dropping thething down, I made it look amazing.
There were ways to make it look better.
And has a weird blocky designs that always look great, which has a little bit ofmodifications to them.
You can think that the worst car and about less than $5,000 later, you can have theworld's best looking car.
(20:07):
I don't know them in Volkswagen.
I do this.
It's part of the design language.
They just know how to make something bland and boring look good in the aftermarket world.
But as the market retracts on these
They eventually disappear.
The PT Cruiser had a big enough retro market that they managed to go out through twodesign phases.
you've noticed, a lot of the vehicles I've talked about in this only lived through onedesign phase.
(20:32):
The Honda Element, the PT.
Cruiser, one of the only two that made it across multiple ones.
Hell, the FIAT Uno, one of those boring designs from Italy ever has managed to make it along time.
We're talking decades.
Mercedes A Class has kicked around.
Now the A-Class design is completely changed, just like the GLC coupe models.
(20:53):
So some of these live past one generation, but if they're not big enough and don't takeenough of the market share out there to gain traction for the vehicle, they can't live
past that first generation.
And if they become a flop in sales board members don't want to push through a secondgeneration.
The Aztec could have been so much more had they put a Pontiac vibe front end on it, gotrid of the plastic body cladding.
(21:15):
If you look at
Aztecs with that old plastic body cladding.
They they actually look a little bit better.
They look more Pontiac inspired.
Add a Vibe front end to it and fix up the back.
You got to remember the back of the Aztec was very similar to the second design of theToyota Prius with that broken window on the back.
How the Mitsubishi Eclipse or ASX has the same thing as well.
(21:37):
So there's parts of the design they could have kept, but other ones they need to change.
A little less character on the side.
A Vibe front end.
Bigger tires and wheels because I knew somebody that actually drove one of these thingsand he said, it feels like it's going to tip over every single time you turn a corner.
It doesn't, but it feels that way.
Different tires.
There's so much that could have been done to make these vehicles last longer.
(21:58):
Kind of like the Toyota Privia.
It became the Sienna when they got rid of that giant aerodynamic weird ass design fromearly nineties.
The Honda Pilot finally got away from it's block toaster style.
That's a podcast we did about.
Toaster cars, there's a lot of them out there, big blocky vehicles and quite a few of themin the bad designs.
The element, the cube, the pilot, hell, even the Scion XB are all part of toaster cars,two box designs at their maximum.
(22:25):
Some of them are just bad designs in the design era.
The Nissan Quest, the last design we had in North America.
was the worst one.
think the design literally killed the vehicle.
But if you look at the vehicles, like Nissan's at that point in time, that's when theywere getting into bed with Renault and they started utilizing Renault designs.
And if you've seen Renault designs in the late nineties and early 2000s, you reallyunderstand they have a lot.
(22:48):
And I do mean a lot of bad designs, but unfortunately they had a market that really didn'tcare.
They just wanted to buy French cars on a French market.
So they sold.
Some of these are horrible designs and they sell for quite a while.
Like I said, the PT Cruiser over a decade.
The Aztec only lived a few years, but the PGA lived on.
Some of them come back.
The FIAT Multipla, as we all thought, was horrible design.
(23:11):
Zotye from China decided to bring back their own Multipla in 2012, 10 years later, andthey really didn't do much to make it better.
The actual headlights and hood formation were a little bit different.
a little more modern, a little more streamlined compared to the original multiple, butstill wasn't that great.
Now, do you want to talk about weird designs that have attempted to come out to the marketand tempted to keep themselves from being destroyed in the market?
(23:39):
I don't know if I'm going to get sued or, you know, be served papers after this podcastcomes out.
back in 2013, a plastic surgeon from California decided to create his own car called theYouabian Puma.
It's an early iteration of an active sports car.
It kind of looks like an Eagle Talon that was stretched out, given some off-road tires,and then somebody just beat it in the face of the shovel.
(24:02):
It's but ugly and weird.
It doesn't have a purpose.
It was kind of cool in its concept, but design?
Somebody really shit the bed there.
Of course, the guy's a plastic surgeon.
I really would like to see some of his work to find out how he actually managed to make anEagle Talon look like this thing, because
I wouldn't trust him.
If I found out it was him that made the car and he's about to do my nose job.
(24:25):
Sorry, I'm getting a new doctor.
But this thing, it came out.
Now it was a specialty product.
He only sold a very few amount of them and never became a big car company.
So something like that explains itself with a bad design.
It's a creator's design.
That's what they love.
That's what they wanted to create.
They wanted to see if there's a market, even if there wasn't a market, they got thevehicle that they loved and always wanted.
(24:48):
You'll be in Puma.
He got what he wanted.
That plastic surgeon got the car he always wanted.
It was his dream.
That's his dream.
May not be everybody else's dream.
We may bad mouth it.
A lot of other people may bad mouth it, but he loved it.
It's a face only a mother can love.
And he did.
Unlike the FIAT 500L living.
Oh God, you take the 500 and stretch it back and up out.
(25:10):
It's literally like you just stretched it.
And that's a design you could do that with.
It looks worse.
Hell, the 500 to begin with is not a car I really care about, but
As a two door little hatchback, it's a lot cooler than this crossover vehicle they createdwith the 500L living.
Besides that, gaining entry into markets is one of the biggest things people try and breakout in their own niches.
(25:32):
And that's where a lot of these vehicles come from.
They try and meet the market demand.
They try and meet a brand like break a new niche, or they're even just trying to breakinto the market.
Something like Cenntro City Porter, Cenntro Electric builds the most bland
basic looking commercial vans out there.
But if they price them at such a low rate, people will just buy them.
(25:52):
They won't care the designs was boring, bland things you've ever seen in your entire life.
Even worse than the Cybertruck or even a Mercedes Benz EQS, literally just a giant blob.
They're bland, they're boring and they got no substance.
But these vehicles came out for a purpose and they met that purpose and they met thatmarket and people very select few.
(26:15):
liked them.
Hell, some of them even fit into a marketplace that was just emerging and hung around justbecause they were one of the first ones like the Gremlin and Pacer.
The Citation had a place in history.
The Corvair had a place in history.
The 600 Multipla had a place in history.
The VehiCROSS, the buddy electric, little two-seater electric car had a place in history.
(26:36):
All of these vehicles gave us something that somebody wanted and somebody thought theworld needed.
At that point in time,
It was the greatest project on paper.
Even if the design didn't work, everything else about it would work for the marketplace.
We're going to make some money off of it.
It's not going to become a major dud and we're not going to lose our shirts on it.
(26:57):
Some of these companies did go belly up because they were too small to try and keepthemselves into the marketplace that they were building.
Mitsuoka keeps going out and creating weird vehicles like the Galue the Viewt and theHimiko
weird looking vehicles built up pre existing platforms, but there's still a market thatwants them that likes them that wants to see them.
(27:18):
You never going to stop all bad designs because we change all these bad designs as we'venoticed with the auto looks rating system.
The end of the year, we've changed so many different designs out into the world that todayare rating systems.
All we're seeing is a C average for everyone.
50 % Yeah, 50 % is the C average for us.
Okay.
C average it's going to be coming a bland
(27:39):
boring marketplace.
We need some of these bad designs gives us something to talk about gives you something totalk about and gives the person who purchases it something to be proud about.
Like I said, the Youabian Puma made the creator proud that he got to own and create thatown vehicle.
I can't say that, but he can even though I badmouthed for its design.
(28:00):
He managed to build that.
I did it.
That's what we really have to start looking at.
These may have been bad designs, but they fit a place in the market.
They had some purpose to being there.
We don't just throw bad designs out there and hope they're going to make it.
Well, we did at one point in time in North America.
We did it back in the early 20s in China.
Well, it's happening right now.
A lot of other places in world.
(28:21):
don't bad designs will keep happening throughout history.
Maybe not so much now as people realize.
Then we need to work on design just as much as technology.
But as technology is becoming more condensed inside of our vehicles, we don't need as muchspace.
So we can make the most beautiful design and put all the amazing technology within it.
We've gotten to a point where we can design the shell of a car and design what's inside ofit.
(28:45):
Instead of designing what's inside of it, then designing the shell.
So bad designs, they're here.
They're going to stick around and we're going to keep talking about them.
So will you ever kill them?
No.
because somebody somewhere is going to say this is a good idea.
So if you like this podcast, we'd like share a comment about any major social feed orstreaming sites.
You found the auto looks podcast on like a share us comment about us.
(29:07):
Send us your friends, your family, your well wishers, girlfriend, boyfriend, you know,anything like that.
Send it out.
Ask them about all these bad designs.
Do you think they like the bad design vehicle?
What do they love about it?
And tell us.
what they love about some of these bad design.
Send us a picture of their crappy vehicle that you think is the most horrible design ahist.
Tell us what they love about it and what they really care about that bad design.
(29:31):
Like I said, send it on your social feeds.
Now, wherever you found the AutoLooks podcast on any the social feeds, streaming sites, oreven the website, us your comments, your input, emails, know where to send it.
If you got questions or you want something answered, send an email over toemail@autolooks.net.
The AutoLooks podcast is brought to you by Ecomm Entertainment Group and distributed byPodbean.com If you'd like to get in with us, send us an email over email@autolooks.net.
(29:55):
So after that, stop by the website, some reviews, check out some of the reviews, go tocorporate links website page, big or small, we got them all available on the AutoLooks.net
website.
And if we don't have them, let us know what your most hated car of history.
Hell, go and check out a corporate links website page.
We got pictures from all these small little car companies, some of them that are horribly,horribly bad that you would never think, why would somebody make that?
(30:15):
It's all available right there for you at the AutoLooks.net website.
So for myself Everett Jay, Podbean.com Ecomm Entertainment Group and the AutoLookswebsite, strap yourself in for this one final ride.
Does he bad designs are going to take us on.
you
you
you
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